This invention relates to furniture and clothing support/hanging arrangements. The invention is particularly applicable to, but not confined to, seating arrangements for such as meetings, convention assemblies, seminars and the like and to the problems faced by attendees in finding a convenient place to hang garments such as a jacket or coat.
It is commonplace for attendees to arrive at such as business meetings/gatherings formally or semi-formally dressed with a jacket. At some stage after arrival it is likely that the attendee will wish to remove his/her jacket for comfort. Meeting rooms are notoriously warm and stuffy environments, not sympathetic to jacket wearers. At the same time attendees will wish to keep their jackets close by for security and quick access to pocket contents etc. It is often the case that jackets may be required to be placed back on as temperatures cool.—it is a well known source of discomfort to find significant temperature fluctuations in such as large hotel meeting and convention centre rooms, due to the varying operation of air conditioning systems for large areas. Typically an attendee will (or will endeavour to) hang his or her jacket over his/her seat backrest, but this can be a problem in many instances and usually has a number of disadvantages, including for example:    a. a problem in keeping the jacket in place on a backrest having rounded upper edge parts;    b. collar and label rumpling and/or jacket dislodgment with back pressure from and movement by the seated person;    c. the lower edge parts of the jacket resting on or brushing the floor and becoming dirtied, particularly when the jacket is simply hooked from the neck or collar part at one corner of or a projection on the backrest; and    d. distortion and possible damage to the jacket by improper support and non-conforming shape of the seat backrest upper edge parts, particularly with back pressure and movement as aforesaid.